Inaugural speech: in the ear of the beholder
To me, Trump’s inaugural speech was congruent with his prior message, and mainly struck notes of populism and nationalism. What else would anyone expect? He hammered on the idea of government during his administration as listening to and being responsive to the people, concentrating on America (both its problems and its promise), and called for working together to restore that promise.
And yet for the most part the MSM treated Trummp’s speech as something uniquely awful, divisive, and shocking, and said he painted an extremely and unprecedentedly gloomy picture of American decline. What they meant was: “we hated it, and we hate him, and we want you to hate him too—but most of our readers already do, anyway.” You might say the MSM is divisive.
Lately I often find myself in the position of other writers who’ve said, “Dear Media, why are you making me defend Trump?”
Actually, I plan to agree with Trump when I agree with what he does, and criticize him when I disagree with what he does, and if he’s just blah-blahing about giving power to the people and putting America first—and stating that recently there’s been quite a bit of mucking up in those arenas—then there really isn’t all that much more to say about it except that these have been the themes of his campaign right along and were the reasons he was elected.
So far, I haven’t included links in this post—it was meant to be just a quick impression. But it’s not the least bit hard to find them. For example, if I go to the WaPo at the moment I see this list of articles about the inauguration:
1 Opinion Trump’s America is a rotten place
2 Opinion Trump’s inaugural address offers nothing to soothe the worst fears about him
3 Opinion Donald Trump has assembled the worst Cabinet in American history
4 Donald Trump’s full inauguration speech transcript, annotated
Well, at least they offer that fourth link, so people can judge for themselves.
Ah, but note that word: annotated. They can’t let you judge the transcript without intervention, even with all those other op-eds. They must intersperse helpful little interpretations along the way, right along with the transcript.
More from the WaPo, in case you didn’t get the hint:
Trump’s inauguration was a Gothic nightmare
Is this what we’ve come to, America?
Trump sank to the occasion.
Well, now we know what to think.
Libs and the MSM are pathetic. Dr. Price’s bought a tiny amount of Zimmer. Absurd.
This is the best Cabinet ever.
The only reasonable criticism I found: “It is declaration of war!” Well, it certainly is. But ALL his campaign was declaration of war! So why this fake outrage?
And George Will needs to retire.
America needs a whole new approach to all of government. The establishment – of both parties – has failed miserably.
I have read that Trump’s speech lacked the poetry of JFK’s. JFK gave us such ringing phrases as, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden…support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the success and survival of liberty”. This was uttered barely three months before he abandoned Cuban freedom fighters on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs.
Trump is excoriated for the phrase “carnage in America”, as though blood does not run in the streets of Chicago and other cities. As though the urban rot of Detroit, and other inner cities, doesn’t exist. As though our government did not increase the national debt to exceed a staggering $19 trillion, an increase of nearly $9T in eight years. As though a massive bureaucracy doesn’t function without semblance of control by constitutional authority.
I will be content if Trump just says what he means and means what he says.
The New Yorker, a magazine I loved for many years, is similarly deranged with an article titled, “A Dark Inaugural” and slideshow of anti-Trump cartoons.
It’s tragic that a magazine with such a great history has become so nakedly, viciously partisan.
CNN seemed to tone down their coverage a tiny bit yesterday, talking a lot obout bringing people together. I think that was because they wanted to be able to go full force today when the women’s protests started.
And you did ear that they are hiring Valerie Jarrett’s daughter to report on the Justice Dept. for them, didn’t you?
The most memorable line for me is, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now”.
That is an unequivocable declaration of action.
I suspect that at least on a subconscious level, many on the left believe him and greatly fear its manifestation. As there is no greater “agony of defeat” than to come as close as possible to victory and then lose.
Dropped the word “broker” from the first comment.
What the MSM and the Washington establishment (such worthies as Will, Krauthammer, Woodward, Kristol, and many, many others) doesn’t grasp is how things have deteriorated in flyover country. We have all the examples of inner city decay such as Chicago, Detroit, St Louis, etal. There is similar but less visible decay in the Rust Belt. For a good exposition on that I highly recommend “Hillbilly Elegy” by J. D. Vance. It is a chronicle of the downward mobility and dysfunction of the Rust Belt due to loss of jobs. People who no longer have a future to look forward to seem to spiral downward in very dysfunctional ways.
What the Washington establishment has done over the years since Reagan is to slowly become ever more isolated from the middle class and more open to the theories of academia. Theories such as CAGW, globalism, open borders, one-worldism, the guilt of the West, Modern monetary Theory, and more. Like all self-satisfied bureaucracies they are shocked when someone disagrees with them or points out their errors. They operate on consensus and the consensus is that the barbarian Trump is going to destroy their cozy world. I do not expect them to understand their errors or to go quietly into the night. Today’s worldwide demonstration of women against Trump is just an opening shot. It is an example of how organized and activist the progressive movement is. The next four years are going to be filled with action.
The msm is shrinking, Trump should restrict the White House media briefings to the alternative media. Neo should have a front row seat and allowed a minimum of 3 questions during each briefing. 😉
I think liberals and the mainstream media in general have been extremely callous to the plight of so many in so many towns all across America.
This is the case in California when you see so many central valley cities with the HIGHEST unemployment rate in the country – so much suffering and no hope in sight with the big city and coastal city people having no empathetic or sympathetic ear AT ALL.
Liberals here don’t even TALK about these issues. THey simply ignore them.
The suffering is like the great depression in many areas of the country and the central areas of California. It’s dramatic and cannot be ignored.
I believe Trump should HIGHLIGHT the PLIGHT and make the press conferences an opportunity to make the main stream people watch. Each press conference can show liberalisms failure.
There is no hope or opportunity in these areas with the jobs simply gone and not coming back.
While I’m not a populist and fear the coming backlash by a trade war with all of the nations – I am happy that the issue is finally being addressed.
http://www.city-journal.org:8080/html/trump-and-american-divide-14944.html
Here’s a video from 2010. The message, which establishment Washington D.C. didn’t get, finally resonated in 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YXqf_6ug54
A comment of mine carried over from the prior post (@3:44 Reflections on President Trump):
The left glosses over these problems first and foremost by refusing to identify them. It’s as if not identifying them or talking about them means that they do not exist. Conversely, talking about something (e.g., global warming, black deaths caused by police, etc.) means that it is a serious problem whether it exists or not.
That is how the narrative is generated. Like The Matrix it is a manufactured narrative not one based upon reality and fact.
Man of action?
Obama’s administration was chock full of “action”.
Of a most devious kind.
Accompanied by a litany of lies to hide just how devious that administration was.
And the media was complicit in those lies and in that absolute deviousness.
Crminially complicit.
You don’t “fundamentally transform” a country without action.
Just as you don’t “fundamentally transform” a country without a tremendous amount of deviousness…
I love it. They annotated the transcript. Jeff Jarvis, a Liberal Hillary supporter and Journalism professor at SUNY said something like 8 to 10 yeas ago on journalists something like – they still think they are there to curate a product for an audience when they are just another node on the network. That was early days and Neo or any of the commenters here have a voice on the network the WaPo and CNN still have a much larger one. On the other hand they using their large megaphone is such a grossly partisan way that it is clear they are experiencing the law of diminishing returns. Against their constant high octane propaganda Trump tells us he will take very public action. Just the opposite of what Barry Meislin in his comment above describes as the left acting deviously to transform America. I would say into a politically correct social democracy orchestrated by the devious takeover of education. So we shall see if action speaks louder than words. It wont at the WaPo but we shall see if Trump’s actions reach enough of the public to sustain a continued majority in 2018 and 2020.
The cat ladies of the day after just naturally outnumbered Trump supporters at the inauguration – they have a lot more money to spend on meaningless outrage, having been the chief beneficiaries of the “wonderful Obama economy” of the last 8 years (no, honestly, that’s how a Rubio advisor on Fox described it yesterday maybe Marco needs to come home and talk to some real voters in FL before he contracts this firm again). Bernie had it almost correct. He just didn’t define the rich broadly enough to include the upper middle classes now terrified that their rice bowls might be filled less richly than before.
I loved the speech. He defecated all over Barack and his entire eight years, as Barack stood beside him.
But it’s gonna get ugly fast; very ugly. The Left’s (non-legislative) backlash will be massive; it will make the George W. years look like Sunday School.
BTW, see Bachner & Ginsberg’s new book on the Federal bureaucracy: “What Washington Gets Wrong”.
In the immortal words of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright- “the chickens have come home to roost!” Has anybody forgot that the President was elected with an Electoral landslide? I believe the word Mandate comes to mind. Seems like the media has not just forgotten the men and women of our country, but continue to ignore them. The american people require timely, factual news. The MSM is going to propagandize itself out of business. The MSM act like they went to the Joseph Goebbels School of Journalism. He ended up killing his family and himself in the twilight of the Nazi apocalypse, a true believer to the end.
Don’t know how many times it must be repeated, but will have to as long as the “spin” (lie – for those in power who should know better) that this election was a “landslide” persists.
1) trump’s overall percentage was lower than clinton’s. Spare me the “but it was almost all in the coasts” – I know that, but it doesn’t make the point false, if one is attempting to claim “landslide”.
2) BOTH candidates pulled in one of the lowest percentage of eligible voters (i.e. many expected voters from BOTH parties stayed home). trump had 27.2% to clinton’s 28.4%. For perspective, two things:
a) McCain had 28.1% against obama’s real landslide with 32.8% of eligible voters. In 2012, Romney had 27.4%, and trump underperformed even that.
b) trump had performed historically poorly by the standards of challengers in post-incumbent elections (i.e. where the same party is seeking a third term).
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443687/barack-obama-real-reason-trump-won
3) trump received razor thin margin (less than 1%) in the three swing states that put trump over, WI, MI, PA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016
4) The above three points feed into the reality trump didn’t win a landslide level of ec votes. In fact, trump’s margin over clinton of 77 ec votes is 15th of the last 18 elections, and is one of only five of those 18 that didn’t break a margin of 100 ec votes. The top four of these all won with >400 ec vote margins.
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/historical.html
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What is different this time is GOP domination on all three: House, Senate, POTUS.
So, perhaps one COULD say the GOP won a landslide this year.
There is certainly enough evidence to point to which says trump hardly, if at all, had any coattails, as GOP candidates in a large proportion of Congressional races received larger percentage margins than trump did.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443909/real-reason-trump-won-trend-away-incumbents-strongest-factor
So, their wins are largely on their own, or in spite of trump at the top of the ticket.
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IF there is a “mandate”, it is far murkier than a simple declaration as such.
If we are talking legislatively, then it would seemingly belong to the GOP in general, given trump’s lack of “coattails”.
Also, to the extent one declares so for trump, they’d have to make the case about a mandate for what?
It was well debated in these comments sections here just how unknown / unknowable (mutable) trump was on many issues.
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But, that is a separate, very debatable issue, whereas, certainly, one cannot credibly say “the President was elected with an Electoral landslide” (at least not without redefining what a “landslide” essentially is – there seemed to be a lot of this redefining in 2016, so no surprise it continues).
That this is even debatable is akin to the (unnecessary and distracting) “debate” over the size of the inauguration crowd.
Everyone chooses which to believe, facts be d*mned (or should that be “alternative facts” be embraced).
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trump is the legitimate president. He won fair and square.
There is no need to “exaggerate” it as the “biggest XXXX ever”, when it is clearly not.
We don’t win the argument with our own, and bigger, lies.
Nobody wins.
Big Maq: Well reasoned!
I crunched the numbers from the last three elections and came up with the same results. Trump came closer to catching Romney than I figured, but he still failed to match Romney.
Trump was not as strong a candidate as Romney or McCain. He won because his votes were more strategically distributed. He won because of a razor-thin margin of 78,000 votes out of 13,000,000 in three key states.
And he won because he didn’t run against Obama. Instead Trump ran against the least charismatic, most obviously corrupt Democratic candidate I can remember.
Aside from its unexpectedness this is not an impressive victory.
@huxley – Thanks! Agree.
I ran the numbers in 2012, and was very much unimpressed with obama’s victory too, on a very similar basis it turns out (though his margins were larger than trump’s).
The left / msm tried to make it an electorally (re)affirmed mandate.
I’m sure many here who are claiming trump landslide / mandate balked at that notion in 2012.
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The GOP control all three branches, so there is an opportunity.
The wild card is trump.
That unknown and highest potential for downside impact, is mostly in the foreign sphere where trump has the least restraint and influence from Congress.
His appointees have largely been good in this respect, but some are questionable, and it is yet to be seen how much influence they have vs trump’s twitter diplomacy.
That’s where the next 100 days will, I very much hope, make it much clearer where trump is really headed.
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The real indicator will be when he is “tested” a second time on something major.
FWIW, my theory is that all foreign governments will want to tread lightly, but someone will do something to trip a response and trump will be chomping at the bit by then to make an example.
The second test will really be the measured test for trump.
That may not yet be within the first 100 days, but who knows.
He won because of a razor-thin margin of 78,000 votes out of 13,000,000 in three key states.
A strong tactical ground game, because Democrats can’t steal an election when Democrat zones vote REpublican. Unexpected.
The Democrats shred as many Republican votes as they fabricate from dead ones, if not more. Recall how after each recount in Florida, the military Republican absentee counts kept going down and down for the total.